Are We Trying To Practice Ourselves Perfect?

Is perfectionism creeping into your personal development toolbox? This is a scary one to think about because approaching our healing modalities with a perfectionistic attitude can be super dangerous. So how can we avoid this? Tune into the episode to find out!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Wild Freewell podcast.

Today I would like to explore a question with you and kind of see where that leads.

Something that has been coming up a lot lately with clients and even in my own life is the idea of are we trying in some way to practice ourselves into perfection?

So what I mean by that is like in particular with clients whenever someone learns a new tool or a new strategy or a new practice they then kind of try to like use that tool or practice or strategy perfectly.

They try to use it like exactly how I explained it to them or how they've seen it online etc.

I've seen this even with like people I follow or like I've seen it with clients and I know that I was like this a long time ago too.

This like almost like rampant perfectionism in terms of like a morning routine and like your morning routine has to have like xyz in it and it has to be done at this time.

Like you know like there's the idea of like the 4am or the 5am club like you need to get up early,

You need to get up before everybody else is getting up,

You need to do like certain things like you need to do morning pages and by the way you need to do three and by the way it needs to be stream of consciousness and you know you should meditate for 30 minutes twice a day once in the morning once at night as soon as you get up.

Don't do it in bed,

Don't do it lying down.

You should also like do yoga you know breathe deeply,

Do breath work,

Check in with astrology for the day.

Like there's all these tools and they're all wonderful and they all have such tremendous value if we use them correctly and when we don't let them use us.

So I've talked about this a little bit in other podcasts but I really want to like dive deeper into this topic and kind of explore this question with you.

The idea of what we're trying to achieve within our practices.

I've seen this in myself a lot.

I've seen it in basically everything I've ever done in my lifetime when I first start out.

So yeah I'll just totally call myself out like even with the like if you listen to the last podcast you know that I'm doing a kundalini yoga program.

It's my first real experience with kundalini yoga aside from an experience I had 10 years ago which was horrible,

Horrible experience.

I was so triggered by the practice and I ended up just dropping it because it was not right for me at the time and amen that I did that.

That was the right decision for me.

Sorry.

So but when I first started meditating you know there were so many rules about how one should meditate.

The correct way to meditate.

It almost makes me want to vomit saying these words because it's I just it's so not at all what I believe.

It's not at all how I want to live my life.

It's not even how I live my life.

Like literally every aspect of my existence is so against the status quo and so against the grain and not like forcefully not purposefully but because it's genuinely what's aligned.

So it makes me laugh that I have this tendency towards like blind obedience and then this sort of rebelling against authority and I have them like in equal measure and I don't know where that comes from or why it is but it like it makes for quite the rodeo let me let me tell you.

So with this kundalini yoga now like in trying to do it when I was first starting out and I've been doing it for I'm on day 10 now which is nothing but it feels like a lifetime.

But I'm on day 10 of doing it consistently.

I've done it every day for the last 10 days because we're that's like kind of the practice and I and I I understand that I'm against like this consistency for the sake of consistency.

I did it on day eight and it was a shit show.

I showed up and it was so bad and the whole time I was watching the clock and praying for it to be over and at the end of the day I only did half and I really honestly I count that as a win because I sat down and I had the intention to do it and I just I couldn't get past what I had done.

I couldn't go beyond what I had already done so I dropped it.

But when I first started and I was doing these movements and doing this breath work and the breath work is extremely triggering for me.

I do have a little bit of asthma.

It's nothing serious thank goodness but I do have that and so the breath work was like triggering my asthma and I'm waving my arms around and I'm saying these like mantras and I'm literally just going around like what the fuck is going on?

What am I doing and why am I doing this and what is the purpose of all this and like what am I supposed to gain and like what do these words mean and why am I saying them and all of these things came up.

And so I started doing a little bit of research and within this doing research about kundalini yoga because I felt like I wasn't getting fully what I needed within the program that I'm in which I hate saying but it was a me thing.

No one else needed this information besides me and I sat with that too before I made that decision because I felt like I was trying to control the situation and again trying to be a perfectionist.

Like I need to understand exactly why I'm doing this so I understand exactly what result I'm aiming for so that I know whether or not I have reached it.

100% that was 100% there.

There was also just a genuine curiosity though and I don't like saying things when I don't know what they mean.

Obviously I think that that's a wise piece of advice for everybody like don't just like blindly follow things like ask yourself do some self-inquiry and find out why you're actually doing what you're doing but I was looking I did some research and tried to like understand a little bit more but when I first started doing the practice I was really mad because I wasn't doing it like perfectly and somehow there's this association in my mind and I think that a lot of this is not mine personally but there's a lot of conditioning here there's this idea that like if we don't do it perfectly it's just really not worth doing at all and so I was really approaching my practice the Kundalini Yoga practice with this energy and you I can feel that even like a few days later and like having shifted this over the last week and a half that I'm my practice is so different like I'm different within it the results that I'm getting are different because I finally managed to kind of let go a little bit so it's really fascinating that what I ultimately wanted and what I was trying to force myself towards is not was not getting me what I wanted but it arrived when I just kind of like threw my hands in the air Jesus take the wheel and surrendered which is ultimately what the point of all of this is right it's all it's I mean like I've given away the I've given away the the the point of this podcast at like six minutes in but yeah it's like surrender surrender and your life will be better okay you can stop listening now go on about your day but one of the things that like I want to to kind of explore more is why are we why are we trying to be perfect in our practices like why are we trying to meditate perfectly journal perfectly do morning pages the way that we've been told you know do yoga and like do all of these things like exactly the way that they're meant to be without ever really asking ourselves maybe if it's right for us or not really allowing ourselves to explore what flair we can put on it like how we can make something that somebody else has created our own and like really allowing ourselves to be human within the process why don't we do that and what are we really searching for when we're trying to do things perfectly like what outcome are we hoping for and I think that it's important to have a conversation about like the society that we live in okay because we can't fully remove ourselves from it so if we take a second and we really explore where we are in the world and the way that we are engaging with the world and how much of that is because of our conditioning because of our culture because of our society right it's the society that we find ourselves in sorry and not necessarily because we chose it but we are actively choosing it if we realize that it is that way and then we're not actively choosing something else love the word actively guys it's just that's the word of 2023 actively so I do think that when we are looking to do things perfectly when we're trying to do things perfectly especially in our personal development which is I mean it's danger on top of danger to do it but I know that it's something that I suffer from something that I think anyone who's on their personal development path will bump up against is this idea but I think that what we're hoping for is we're trying to find a sense of belonging and we're trying to feel acceptance because what we're being sold by the world around us at large is this idea that if we do things the way that we're told then and we do them just right then we will achieve these like specific results and we see this in the personal development world with people saying like you know two-step process and and all these things and like I use these words too because the processes have worked for me but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best way to to go about it and it is a little bit of marketing at the end of the day but I think that we're we're really trying to surpass our humanity we're trying to get rid of it or not really embrace it certainly and we're trying to achieve a certain of enlightenment so if we do the meditation practice just so just the right amount of time at the right time of day for the right amount of days for the rest of our lives we will like you know we will achieve other worldliness we will be ethereal and we will be enlightened and then within that I think too there's this idea of a little bit of superiority like we want to be better than other people and I don't think we're admitting this to ourselves I think all of this is like unconscious but we want to be better than people because if we are better than them if we're more enlightened more woke to use like you know insta slang but if we're more woke than they are we're more enlightened then they can't find us out and they can't call us out on our mistakes because that's something that they do but I don't because I've evolved beyond being a perfectly functioning human being and I don't think that we want this consciously I really don't believe that we do but I think that that's exactly the approach that we we come at especially our personal development because personal development is becoming increasingly capitalistic because there there's a bit of boom in the last like maybe I think 10-15 years something like that and people realize that they can make money helping others and so we are capitalizing on it capitalism that's the way she goes and so like because there's like this it's kind of becoming more popular and more en masse and it's in the field of vision of a lot more people and the prices like are you know kind of high to work with somebody like for coaching and stuff like that or for even therapy and and whatever so people are seeing that they can achieve a certain amount of prosperity and so they use their marketing using capitalistic marketing to sell personal development and so now we are kind of seeing this shift of like approaching our personal development from this very capitalistic mindset of like well I have to do it this way I have to be perfect I have to be a certain way or I'm not going to be good enough I'm not going to be worthy I'm not going to be lovable and the reality is is that if we look at the way that we are being marketed to in a capitalistic society it's basically that we are not good enough unless we do A,

B and C and those things must also be done perfectly and we must also especially as women look smell and behave a certain way in order to be acceptable and if and only if we do all of those things in the right order at the right time in the right way then we will finally be okay we will finally be acceptable we will finally be cool we will finally be popular we will finally be loved whatever it is we will finally belong right and with too within this we see even like the sort of influencing industry coming into play because now we're also kind of getting sold these images that if I look a certain way and I behave a certain way and I sell a certain lifestyle I'm going to get shit for free and like who doesn't want free shit I've had I literally talked about that on a podcast not that long ago everybody loves free shit right let's be real so there's a lot of layers here and so much of it has nothing whatsoever to do to us it's not necessarily that we believe that we're fundamentally like wrong or unworthy or not good enough but we are being sold to 24 fucking 7 nowadays in everywhere we are being sold to every single where we turn every single place we turn there is really no escaping the advertising and the advertising industry the whole purpose of it is to create a sense of lack so that you sorry so that you purchase whatever the product is that they're trying to sell you that will fix this lack that will fill that void and if we are also approaching our personal development that way then that's really scary because the void is us and the thing that needs to be filled is us and that is that is really dangerous because it leads to even more belief that we're not good enough or worse like belief that if you just buy my product if you just buy my service if you just buy my program or my book or whatever then you will be better right and if you just do my 30-day like kundalini yoga course you will be better or you will feel more enlightened or you will feel whatever it is like we're all doing it and the only thing that matters is the intention behind it like I'm not saying that we can escape it necessarily but we do need to be mindful of it and that's both us people who are consuming and people who are selling so like that's on me as well right the language that I choose to use and the way that I choose to brand my services and I think that there is a difference too between somebody who is trying to sell for the sake of selling and somebody who genuinely believes in what they're selling and somebody who genuinely believes in what they're offering that that what they offer can genuinely help you or change your life they really want to engage with you on a human level and they want to support you as a person and it's not just about like making a buck but I think going back to the original discussion because that was a bit of a tangent but going back to this idea of like being perfect within our personal development and the ways that's kind of like I mean we're kind of punishing ourselves with these tools aren't we because we have to do them in a certain way at a certain time in a certain form for a certain amount of time etc etc and then we will be you know halfway decent and so it's it's it is especially toxic too in this industry because we're punishing ourselves with the tools that we are also expecting to heal us and they won't heal us if we're approaching them with that energy and so it kind of goes back to this idea of like intention is everything but also nothing outside of you is going to fix you nothing nothing one because you don't need to be fixed you just don't and I understand that we all at times feel like we're broken we all at times feel like we need to be fixed and again that's because we're constantly being told that we're not good enough by the world around us unfortunately but there is nothing to fix and even if you do feel that way approaching your life with this energy and this intention is going to do nothing but drag you even farther down and I say that as somebody who is like constantly unfolding this constantly unfolding this like I'm not better than you I'm not farther ahead than you we're all on this human path figuring shit out to get there that's that's the way it is but when we're attempting to heal ourselves and like we're using these tools and the tools in and of themselves are just tools they are not good or bad there's some that you like better there's some that you like less that's all there there is no good or bad tool and what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for somebody else and that's just the fact of the matter like there is no one size fits all solution which is something I say all the time but we're when we're approaching these things from a space of if I just do this and I'll be good enough or then I'll belong or then I'll fit in and we have this underlying fear of not being good enough and of being sort of called out and of making a mistake and of failing and of not being seen in this like perfect light then all we're doing is holding ourselves back and we're never actually going to get where we hope these practices will take us and there will be benefits it's inevitable because as long as you're doing it and showing up even if you have the worst intentions you're probably still going to see some results but if you can really sit into it in a from a space of like I'm already good enough and I don't need this practice to be better then that is going to have a huge difference and a huge impact on the results that you get and just really allowing yourself to be human like whatever that means like there's going to be days where you're like bursting with energy and life is fucking great and you're literally walking on sunshine and like you know Cinderella's little birds come and put your robe on you in the morning there will be days like that and there will be days where you wake up looking like the Wicked Witch of the West and you want to set fire to every person like thing and building around you and like talking to people is the bane of your existence all of that is true and all of it is okay and like we don't need to like cut out half of our human experience to just save the good parts because Instagram has trained us to see and search for this perfection and I'm sorry because like I know I got a little bit of beef with social media but I do think that that is a huge part of why we're in this position to begin with because so much of like self-care and personal development is on social media that is where a lot of us are finding these podcasts or finding you know like the tools that we're using and it's great it is amazing that those things are so accessible but when we're seeing like this like you know teensy blonde beautiful skinny perfect skinned yoga teacher doing yoga and there's no shame in being those things because she probably worked really fucking hard to be that way so kudos to her but when we see that and we try to like aspire to that like we're never gonna be her and our experience is never going to be the same as hers because we are literally on a molecular level different like we're not the same people so can you take the tools and put like your stamp on it can you take the tools and approach them with humanity and do them your way and do them the best you can on the days when you're walking on sunshine and they're great and on the days when you're the wicked witch of the west and everything sucks like allow yourself to just be a fully formed human not that's denying 50% of like their experience because there is always going to be that contrast there is always going to be light and dark there's always going to be really fantastic days and there's going to be really crappy days and there's going to be days when you feel happy and sad and all in between you might feel these things all in one day or all in one hour who cares who cares right like you're just experiencing it and in if you are actively searching out healing then allowing yourself to be with whatever comes up in whatever way it comes up is going to be the quickest path to where you want to go forcing yourself into anything is never ever the answer and you're only going to create more blocks and more obstacles that you ultimately have to move past in order to get where you want to go so as I said at like the six minute mark basically the idea is that we completely surrender our experience and we don't necessarily need to surrender it to God or the universe but we can if we want to as well we can say a little prayer we can set an intention and that is so beautiful and so powerful but it's literally going into it just saying like okay whatever happens in my practice today happens and wherever I do it I do it and whenever I do it I do it and if I don't do it oh well because it does need to be done perfectly and it does need to be done at exactly the specific time in order for it to be be valid or worthy or whatever right like we show up the best that we can this is something that's been interesting because um just as a side note like I also need to do um my license oh I'm saying it out loud and it's just for shame but anyways I also have to get my license in Italy I can drive I have been driving for like I don't know not 15 17 17 years I've been driving for 17 years and yet in Italy I cannot drive and in order to get my license I have to go through um this I have to go through everything again so I have to get my drivers I have to go through the test the written test and do the lessons and then I have to do the practical test and all of it and it's just so anxiety inducing for me and it's just really interesting because like this is one of those things that triggers me and I don't know why I brought this up I guess the universe just wanted me to out myself but um it can be really oh I remember now it can be really difficult when you're trying to do all the things so like remember I'm working making this podcast for all you beautiful souls listening to it I am also like having like taking care of Mila and taking care of the house and exercising at some point and trying to make dinner and I also need to study for my driver's test there's only so much that us as little humans can do so trying to remember that and just not forcing yourself again to try and approach everything with this perfectionism but just giving yourself the space to do some things better some things worse some things one day some things another and just however that unfolds it unfolds that's basically it so yeah I hope that this episode was useful I hope that you feel inspired to like let that shit go just let it go and yeah that you find a way to sink into your own you know sense of acceptance and belonging just within yourself because the more that you can embrace that in your own being the more that vibe will pass on to other people and the more you'll you'll receive what you're looking for and then just remember that a practice is a tool you know it's meant to help you and you are magic and so you are meant to also put your unique spin on things as well and that is where you will ultimately find your own liberation so yeah I hope this episode was useful and I can't wait to see you on the next episode take care!